The Stranger in the Attic Finding a Lost Brother in his Letters Home John Kedzie Jacobs 9780615827391 Books
Download As PDF : The Stranger in the Attic Finding a Lost Brother in his Letters Home John Kedzie Jacobs 9780615827391 Books
John Kedzie Jacobs is ninety-five years old. In this heartbreaking memoir he collects the letters of his brilliant, lost older brother and brings us into the world of the Great Depression -- what he calls that "wonderful, dreadful, wonderful period" in America.
The Jacobs brothers grew up in a nervous, brainy family on a struggling Hudson Valley apple farm. In 1932 Edward went to New York City to study at the Art Students League in a class with Jackson Pollock where his teachers included Thomas Hart Benton and George Grosz. He painted murals for Roosevelt's Work Projects Administration and was an active member of the communist party. In early 1937 he joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and went to Spain to fight with the Loyalists against Franco. He was executed there by Franco's army in March, 1938. He was twenty-four years old.
John Jacobs moved back to the farm when he retired from the United States Information Agency. His wife Katia found a trove of letters in the attic, many of them to and from Eddie. The letters chronicle his days at a Quaker boarding school in Poughkeepsie; his thrilling time as a broke, passionate, political artist in New York; a cross-country trip riding the rails and camping in the hobo jungles of the Great Depression; and finally his revelatory, soaring time in Spain, as a member of the International Brigade. Friends and teachers come to life in his letters, bringing the era into full, present color.
John was a freshman at Antioch College when Edward was lost in Spain. Reading these letters for the first time at eighty-three, he found someone very different from the challenging, intense brother he remembered. Living in the house where they grew up together, he undertook this extraordinary act of brotherly love. Full of family stories, questions about memory and myth, drawings and paintings and photographs, The Stranger in the Attic is a fully alive, immediate and deeply affecting picture of an American family and their time in history.
The Stranger in the Attic Finding a Lost Brother in his Letters Home John Kedzie Jacobs 9780615827391 Books
First, let me say that I saw this manuscript when it was in development and made a couple of suggestions to the author, a wonderful gentleman, but even if that had not been the case, I would be overwhelmed by this book. I doubt there's anyone alive who could tell a similar story -- or as well. If you want to learn firsthand what it was like to be raised in a small town in the early part of the 20th century (and be charmed by the author's sly wit and writing style in the process), what it was like to caught up in that amazing, turbulent decade, the 1930s or to experience the devastating loss of a sibling in a war, a terrible war where too many young, idealistic people were sacrificed to a Nazi war machine that basically saw Spain as batting practice while the world's democracies ignored at their own peril what was going on before their eyes. Well, we know the result, but what John Kedzie Jacobs tells us is what we too often forget: about the individual toll of the war. Multiply it by a thousand times and you can almost understand the horrific events that occurred in Spain.Sometimes, the best way to tell a big story, you have to tell a very small one, and this charming, lovely, horrific book succeeds beyond anything I could have imagined. I only wish this review could do it justice.
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Tags : The Stranger in the Attic: Finding a Lost Brother in his Letters Home [John Kedzie Jacobs] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. John Kedzie Jacobs is ninety-five years old. In this heartbreaking memoir he collects the letters of his brilliant,John Kedzie Jacobs,The Stranger in the Attic: Finding a Lost Brother in his Letters Home,Jacobs,061582739X,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs
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The Stranger in the Attic Finding a Lost Brother in his Letters Home John Kedzie Jacobs 9780615827391 Books Reviews
Author has done a great job of a difficult bit of history.
I was a neighbor of John Jacobs for many years, so had an interest in anything he wrote. In addition, I found the pictures fascinating and the notes about the war in Spain very touching. I also enjoyed imagining how John felt when he discovered his brother's letters and pictures in the attic. To connect that way with a long-lost sibling must be thrilling.
"Nothing is better than to know real people of any kind". Those words of advice were given to the author of this fabulous book by his father, and this book spends nearly 200 pages proving that point. I came to know this story through the wonderfully descriptive songs of John Jacobs' youngest daughter, Kate. Like her father, Kate brings incredible detail and vision to her work. This book does a number of thing well----VERY well. The writing is absolutely beautiful. John Jacobs grew up in the Hudson Valley and describes the times he lived in and the things he saw with wonderful wisdom and clarity. Not surprisingly, having written his story in his late 80's, he describes a world long gone. But the passion that informed his life, and indeed the lives of everyone mentioned in this book, is a joy to behold. To be very sure, every life described in this book was a pretty hard one. No one here escapes the privations of the Great Depression, and yet somehow all see those times as opportunities not to be missed and pleasures to be enjoyed to the very extent possible. If you are one of the very lucky few who might have actually known people like the Jacobs and their friends and acquaintances, consider yourself very lucky. If you are like this reader, and have only heard stories about these tumultuous times, this is a book not to be missed.
First, let me say that I saw this manuscript when it was in development and made a couple of suggestions to the author, a wonderful gentleman, but even if that had not been the case, I would be overwhelmed by this book. I doubt there's anyone alive who could tell a similar story -- or as well. If you want to learn firsthand what it was like to be raised in a small town in the early part of the 20th century (and be charmed by the author's sly wit and writing style in the process), what it was like to caught up in that amazing, turbulent decade, the 1930s or to experience the devastating loss of a sibling in a war, a terrible war where too many young, idealistic people were sacrificed to a Nazi war machine that basically saw Spain as batting practice while the world's democracies ignored at their own peril what was going on before their eyes. Well, we know the result, but what John Kedzie Jacobs tells us is what we too often forget about the individual toll of the war. Multiply it by a thousand times and you can almost understand the horrific events that occurred in Spain.
Sometimes, the best way to tell a big story, you have to tell a very small one, and this charming, lovely, horrific book succeeds beyond anything I could have imagined. I only wish this review could do it justice.
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